A few days ago—helplessly splayed in the dentist’s chair, mouth wide open—the hygienist wiped my tongue with a soft cloth. My body fidgeted as I’ve always hated cotton-like fabric in my mouth. Actually, hate is too supple a word.
Last Tuesday, at Rotary, I chose not to eat another bite of an otherwise fine-tasting chicken sandwich because the dressing had softened the bread. Truly, choice was a fiction.
Too particular, you say?
Apparently, that’s the shareable version of what my mother shouted when a two-year-old me pushed a bowl of soggy corn flakes off the breakfast table.
Eventually, even my depression-era mom relented to me and my two brothers’ food likes and dislikes.
For Paul Jr., Grape-Nuts was the anti-mushy choice. As Euell Gibbons said in my favorite commercial, “Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible.”
